Dead Point

9

‘Kashboli?’ I said, studying the menu. ‘What does Kashboli mean?’

‘Where have you been, Jack?’ asked Andrew Greer, my former law partner and friend since law school. ‘Kashmiri plus Bolivian. Two interesting cuisines.’

I loosened my tie. ‘With absolutely fuck-all in common.’

‘Exactly. Until united by fusion cuisine.’

We were sitting in the window of Kashboli, an eating and drinking place on lower Lygon Street whose premises had previously housed a famous Carlton dry-cleaning establishment. Where a bar with a mosaic top now stood, garments were once handed over, precious garments, mainly Italian men’s items handed over by Italian women — dinner jackets the men had proposed in, wedding suits, good linen trousers, dark single-vent jackets, many let out a bit at the seams by the skilled fingers of loved ones. It had been my dry-cleaner when I was a five-suit man practising criminal law with Andrew in nearby Drummond Street.

‘Hello, young lovers, wherever you are.’

A seriously big man, big and fat man, in loose white garments, shaven skull, no neck, head like a nipple with features, had appeared behind the bar, sang the line in a singing pose, chin raised, hands up, palms outwards.

Andrew gave him a wave. So did all the other patrons, late-working trade unionists from headquarters down the road by the grim and dedicated look of them.

‘Our host, Ronnie Krumm,’ said Drew.

‘Is that Kashmiri Ronnie Krumm or Bolivian Ronnie Krumm?’

‘Neither. Ronnie’s from Perth, travelled widely in search of the new. I understand the family’s in hardware, very big in the hardware.’

‘Hardware, software, Ronnie’s big all over. What’s the fat content of Kashboli tucker?’

Drew was intent on the menu. ‘Excessive but only good fats. Premium, I’m told. No finer fats available. Well, what’s your fancy or will you be guided?’

‘Be my trained labrador.’

Drew ordered what appeared to be a form of fish stew. It came in minutes, a minefield of a dish. You chewed uneventfully and then you bit on anti-personnel chillies and your eyes lit up from behind. Fortunately, it came with a glass of a sweet off-white substance, a neutralising agent, possibly crushed antacid tablets in a sugar solution.

‘Interesting,’ I said, recovering. ‘Fusion brings electrocution. Tell me about The Green Hill.’

Drew was savouring the Kashboli fish and chilli stew with no sign of strain, no resort to the pale liquid.

‘The Green Hill?’ He raised his glass of Bolivian cabernet to the light, his eyes narrowed, the long face took on a stained-glass religious look. ‘Not your kind of place. Very few geriatrics arguing about football at The Green.’

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘Thinking of taking someone? A date, is it?’

‘With destiny. It’s for a Wootton client. And I’ve been there. This afternoon.’

‘Shit. Boring. How is the love life?’

‘She’s taking pictures in Europe. Not enough time between assignments.’

‘To do what?’

‘Fly home for twenty-whatever hours and go back the next week.’

‘Serious concern?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Extremely fetching person. In a mildly intimidating sort of way. Not talkative exactly,’ said Drew.

‘No. Well, she can be. Depends.’

‘Yes. All life depends. It’s pendant.’

‘The Green Hill?’

‘Testimony to one man’s dream,’ Drew said. ‘Xavier Doyle, heard of him?’

‘I met him. Very affable. He shouted me a pint of Shamrock, told me to call him Ex.’

‘Radiates charm, Mr Doyle. Gave character for a bloke of mine, waiter at The Green, stark naked outside the National Gallery on New Year’s Eve, pointed his bum at a cop. By the time Doyle was finished, I thought the mago was going to award the lad compensation.’

Ronnie Krumm was coming our way, a white tent with a large shining head where the flagpole should be, hipping his way through the tables.

‘Everything all right?” he said. ‘Not too hot for you?’

‘Was this a hot one?’ said Drew. ‘Ronnie Krumm, Jack Irish. Jack used to be my law partner.’

I shook Ronnie’s fleshy hand.

‘And you eat together,’ said Ronnie. ‘Amaazing. I’m still trying to kill my ex-partner.’

‘I never heard you say that,’ said Drew. ‘Call me when you succeed, I’ll see what I can do.’

Ronnie winked and moved on to one of the tables of trade unionists.

‘Yes,’ said Drew. ‘Xavier Doyle, the boy’s a dreamer and a doer. Cook from Dublin, guitar player, he sees the huge old place, used to be a temperance pub, falling down. So he finds the money to buy it, plus megabucks for renovations.’

‘How do you do that?’ I tried to defuse a bite of stew with a big swig of the Bolivian.

‘I don’t know exactly. They say he won over Mike Cundall. And Mrs Cundall, no doubt. And now he’s in with little Sam Cundall and the Sydney sharks, tendering for ski resorts and casinos.’

The Cundall family were in commercial property, carparks, mortgage lending, internet dream factories, many other things. They also gave away large sums and, by all accounts, turned on a good party.

‘Cannon Ridge. How do you know he’s in that?’

Drew was looking into his glass. ‘Because I know things. So what’s the interest in The Green?’

‘Someone called Robbie Colburne was a casual barman there. Dead of an overdose.’

He drank, rolled the wine in his mouth, squinted. ‘Bolivian,’ he said in wonder. ‘Excellent. Half the price of an equivalent local drop. And made by Aussie mercenaries. What happened to loyalty? Patriotism?’

‘You sound like Cyril.’

‘Now there’s a patriot. Fought abroad for his country.’

‘Which broad was that?’

He gave me the Greer frown. ‘Very weak, Jack. It’s all that buggering around with carpentry. You don’t do enough law. Keeps the mind alert. So what’s the problem with a dead waiter? The more the merrier, I say. Did he have a ponytail?’

‘A barman. I’m told the cops were interested in him.’

‘Always interested in barmen, the cops. Source of free drinks. I ran into your sister the other day.’ His eyes were not on me; they were on something behind me.

‘It’s usually the other way around,’ I said. ‘Did she mention that she’s uninsurable?’

‘At lunch with my friends the Pratchetts.’

Dick Pratchett QC was the doyen of the criminal bar, a huge bearded man who cross-examined in a hoarse whisper and sometimes waited for answers with his eyes closed. Juries loved him and so did many murderers and lesser criminals roaming free.

I said, ‘Ah. The trophy bride. Rosa’s friend.’

Pratchett had recently married my sister Rosa’s doubles partner, a woman a good twenty years his junior. Strike three.

‘An attractive person,’ said Drew, still not looking at me. ‘Intelligent to boot.’

‘If you like booting. Her predecessor’s IQ just topped her chest size. Considerable for a chest but only for a chest.’

‘Rosa, I’m talking about your sister.’ Drew met my eyes, looked uneasy. ‘We’re having lunch on Sunday.’

‘My sister. That’s an entirely different matter.’

Rosa was rich, spoilt beyond redemption. But it wasn’t the money that did it. It was being the focus of three adults’ lives. My maternal grandparents’ money had all gone to her and she used it to do nothing. Unless shopping, playing tennis, having brief affairs with unsuitable men and agonising over life constituted doing something.

I let Drew wait. Then I said, ‘She usually lunches with young men. Spunks. Studs. Studs in their ears, studs elsewhere.’

He still wasn’t too keen to hold my gaze, looked over my shoulder again. ‘More of a meeting of minds, this. No objection, is there?’

I studied him, shook my head. ‘Really, Drew, you can look at me when you raise matters like this.’

He looked at me. ‘Well?’

‘It’s your life.’

‘What’s that mean? Of course it’s my fucking life. Don’t you approve?’

‘Approval doesn’t come into it.’

‘So you don’t approve?’

‘Forget this approval stuff. You’re not asking for my permission, are you?’

‘Well, no. Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Don’t. I don’t give permissions.’

A long silence. I thought he was going to get up and leave, let me pay for the explosive fish stew.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Not a good idea, you think.’

We fingered our glasses.

‘Fucking awful idea,’ I said. ‘From my point of view.’

Drew filled our glasses. ‘Exactly why is that?’

I’d never been called upon to do something like this. Since her mid-teens, Rosa had always had two photographs beside her bed: a photograph of Bill Irish, the father she never knew, and one of me, in tennis clothes, the older brother to whom she told everything, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

In short, I knew too much.

‘The risk is,’ I said, ‘the risk is that between the two of you you’ll end up creating some fucking vast, treeless, mined no-go area. For me.’

‘For you?’

‘For me. This is about me. You’re asking me.’

‘What about me?’

‘How can I say this? You’re a divorced prick looking for love and affection. Rosa, on the other hand, is only looking for romance. Do I have to say more?’

Drew considered this statement, looking at me. Then he said, ‘No, your honour.’ He emptied his glass. ‘Let’s get the other half.’

Over at the trade union table, an argument had broken out between a short-haired woman with thick-lensed glasses and a man with a wispy beard. ‘The question isn’t whether it’s a women’s issue,’ said the man, ‘it’s whether it’s a union issue.’

The woman looked at the ceiling and said through tight lips, ‘This is so fucking unbelievably eighties, it makes me want to puke.’

‘A lot to be said for the eighties,’ Drew said, signalling to a waiter. ‘Bernie Quinlan kicked 116 in ’83.’

‘That was ’84.’

‘No, he only kicked 105 in ’84.’